


Will Work for Parts

by crisiskris



Category: Andromeda (TV)
Genre: Harper saves the day, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, M/M, Prostitution, slash if you look for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22260661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crisiskris/pseuds/crisiskris
Summary: Dylan, Beka, and Harper get stranded in the back-end of the universe. Harper finds a way to get them home.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	Will Work for Parts

**Author's Note:**

> I started this quite a while ago and finally filled in the missing scenes so that it is complete. A bit rough, so sorry about that. Would fit somewhere in Season 1 or 2. Canon-compliant-ish.

The blast rocked the Maru, sending her spinning nearly out of control. Dylan flailed for a moment before finding a grip on his console so that he could keep his feet. “Just once,” he swore. “Just once I’d like to make a supply run without getting shot at.” He jabbed at the weapons console, glaring at Beka when she glanced back to smirk at him. 

“Yeah, well, look on the bright side, Dylan,” She replied. “Imagine how much harder it would be to maneuver if the Maru were already full of cargo. At least when we’re empty, we’re light!” She punctuated her ‘silver lining’ comment with a sharp zag to the right which didn’t entirely succeed at avoiding a second Nietzschean missile. 

“Uh, guys?” Seamus Harper’s disembodied voice sounded kind of frantic over the intercom. “This dodging and shooting is fun and all, but that last missile kind of fried things down here. We’re losing power. I’m giving you all I got, but if you want to jump into slipstream and make with the running away, you better do it soon, or we won’t be able to do it at all.”

“Go, Beka,” Dylan said, disgusted. “There’s too many ships; we can’t fight them.”

“Running away, aye,” Beka replied, wrenching the ship around. Just as the portal opened, a huge blast rocketed through the Maru. Dylan barely had time to register Harper’s exclamation of shock before the panel in front of him exploded outward, sending the large man flying over the railing behind him. He caught a glimpse of Beka’s alarmed face as he narrowly brushed past her shoulder on his way to the front of the cockpit, where his left leg slammed into the bulkhead with a sickening crunch before his head hit the wall. He came to a stop, finally, crumpled on the floor, his head ringing, body screaming in pain. 

“I’m diverting life support to the engines, Beka. Hurry!” Dylan heard Harper yell. He fought for consciousness as the familiar, sickening tug of the slipstream drive pulled at him, but it was like he was falling in a hole. He couldn’t hold on. 

**

“He’s heavy.” Harper was somewhere above him, breathing hard. 

“Well, don’t drop him!” Beka’s voice replied. 

“Whass happ’n?” Dylan slurred. He blinked his eyes open, catching a glance of his crew above him, but then shut them again against the sudden, blasting pain in his… everything. 

“Hang on, Dylan, almost there,” Beka assured, and Dylan felt her hand on his cheek. He turned into the connection, hearing his own breath rattle in his chest, and then slid away into darkness again. 

**

“Hey, boss, lie still, okay?” Harper’s voice came to him as if at the end of a long tunnel. Dylan struggled to sit up. 

“No, no, no – really, don’t move.” He could feel the engineer shift around him, and then Harper’s face came in to view. His blue eyes were a little bit glassy and there was drying blood in his hair. Dylan took in the dark shadows under Harper’s eyes. You look so tired, he tried to say, but all that came out was “tired.”

“I know, boss.” Harper patted his shoulder reassuringly, misunderstanding. “It’s okay to sleep. You don’t have a brain injury, it’s just your leg and I’m working on something for that. Beka got you all drugged up, so you just sleep.”

No, that’s not what I meant, Dylan thought, but he couldn’t get his mouth to work, and his eyes felt so heavy…

**  
He woke to angry voices trying to be quiet. “Harper that’s not a good idea,” Beka hissed. 

“I know it’s not a good idea but it’s the only one I’ve got,” Harper cried back, his voice rising until Beka abruptly shushed him. They drifted into murmurs. 

Dylan lifted himself up and looked around. He was lying in a bottom bunk in the Maru’s crew quarters, covered in a blanket that smelled sweet, like cinnamon. Trance’s blanket, then. His head felt fuzzy, but not sore – but his leg ached. He reached down his left side and encountered a strange metal contraption. Sitting up a little further, he cast aside the blanket to investigate. His pants had been sliced up the seam to his inner thigh and his leg was encased in some kind of brace, thrown together from spare parts from the looks of it. That would be Harper’s handiwork, then, Dylan figured. He cautiously tried to bend his knee and was rewarded with a nauseating blast of pain. Right. Broken. Okay. Dylan lay back, breathing deeply and trying to keep still so that the pain would subside. With nothing else to do, he focused in on the voices again. 

“That was then, Harper. This is a whole new thing. It’s different now.”

“Is it really?” There was a sneer in Harper’s tone, a meanness that came out every once in a while, reminding Dylan that as young as he appeared, Harper could be savage – had had to be savage, just to live. Harper was a constant reminder that the world was not as it had been. “Look around, Beka. Dylan’s hurt. The engine is a mess and I can’t fix it.” Harper’s voice had risen again but Beka didn’t shush him this time. “I can’t fix it, Beka. We need parts. We have barely enough food to last us a week, communication’s down, the slipstream’s down, we don’t have any weapons, we don’t have any cargo. What we have is me.”

“And me,” Beka replied, equally loudly. “I’ll go.”

“No. Absolutely not.” Dylan raised an eyebrow. He had never heard Harper take such an authoritative tone with anyone before, especially not Beka. 

“Harper – you can’t do it! It’s exploitation and – hey! What are you doing? Get these things off of me!” Dylan heard the rattle of metal on metal. 

“Ah, sorry, boss, but I gotta go. Parts to find, people to hustle, you know how it is.” The words were light, but there was tension in Harper’s tone. 

“Harper, no!” Beka called. “Hey! Wait!”

“Don’t worry, boss.” Harper’s voice sounded further away now, like he was calling down the hallway. “The cuffs are on a timer. They’ll release in about fifteen minutes.” 

Beka swore, and without thinking, Dylan tried to sit up again, to go to her, release her from whatever Harper had trapped her in. His leg had other ideas, and the blast of agony that washed over him knocked him back to the pillow and back into the greyness of unconsciousness. 

**

He woke again when Beka sat down on his bunk. “Hey,” she said warmly. She looked as tired as he felt. 

“Hey,” he croaked back. 

“I brought you some food. Well, some mush. Here,” She reached behind him and helped him sit up, placing the tray across his lap once he was comfortable. “I know it looks really unappetizing, but it’s not bad. And it’s pretty much all we’ve got. Plus you haven’t eaten in a couple of days and we’re almost out of IV supplements.”

“Okay,” he agreed. He didn’t really feel hungry, but he knew he had to eat, so he picked up the spoon and started dragging the crap to his mouth. She was right, it wasn’t bad. It didn’t really taste like anything, but it had some sort of spice to it. Sweet. “Trance make this?” he asked, on a hunch. 

Beka smiled. “Right in one. Well, Trance modified it. Right after she joined the crew. She said that if we were ever stuck in an emergency and had to survive off it, there was no reason why we shouldn’t at least enjoy it a little.”

“Sounds like Trance. What’s our status?” 

Beka shook her head. “You eat. And then you sleep. Your leg is knitting back together nicely but you need to preserve your strength. Let me and Harper deal with the rest.” Her eyes got kind of unfocused, like she was looking really far away, when she said the engineer’s name. 

“Beka? Harper okay? Beka?” Dylan touched her arm to get her attention, his mind replaying snatches of conversation he could hardly remember, trying to figure out the storyline. 

“Hmmm? Yeah. Harper’s just fine.” Her words sounded reassuring but her face didn’t look it. “I gotta go check something. You eat, and then you sleep.” She was gone before he could question her further. 

**

The next time he woke up, Dylan felt strong enough to get out of bed for the first time since the crash. With a groan, he hauled himself off of the bunk and took a few cautious steps, testing out the brace that Harper had rigged up for his leg. It held. More confidently, he headed down the corridor toward the Maru’s small mess area, where the incredible scent of coffee lured him closer. 

“Well, good morning!” Beka called brightly as he stepped into the room, squinting at the light. “Guess I’ll have to find another cup.” She turned away, digging through a nearby cabinet, while Dylan shuffled over to a chair. Two plates and a bowl on a tray were set up on the table with dehydrated something in them, waiting for hot water to turn them into a meal – but the coffee that was percolating in some ancient metal pot on the stove smelled real enough. 

“Coffee?” he confirmed. 

“Yep. Trance found it a couple of years ago. We’ve been very carefully rationing it out ever since, but I figured that Harper could use some of the real stuff today.” Beka turned around again, triumphantly placing a third cup on the table. She smiled again, but the brightness was lessened, and she didn’t quite meet Dylan’s eyes as she reached over to pull the tray away, leaving the bowl. “Guess I don’t have to bring you breakfast this morning, do I?” She said, still trying for that cheery tone. 

“Beka?” Dylan asked. 

She sighed. “Yeah, Dylan?”

“Where are we? What happened? Where’s Harper?” He watched her hesitate for a moment as though trying to decide what to say. 

“We are on a planet called Marius 12. It’s a hole of a planet in a hole of a system on the butt end of the galaxy. On the other hand, it was the very closest slip point from where we were when the Drago-Kazov nearly blew the Maru out of the vacuum.” She sat, fiddling with the mug in front of her. “We sustained a lot of damage, Dylan. I mean – well, there’s you, for starters. You were out cold when we landed. And it takes a lot to throw a heavy gravity worlder – or a half-heavy gravity worlder, whatever – so… that was bad. Your leg was broken in two places. We were able to use the Maru’s nanobots to repair the break, but they’re not as good as Andromeda’s, so we had to prop you up a little. Do you like your brace?”

“Harper made it. I do remember bits and pieces. I feel like I’ve been sleeping forever, though.”

“On and off for about four days. We didn’t have much on the Maru in the way of painkillers. Trance and I, we got rid of them all after… um…” She flushed and didn’t finish. After she recovered from her flash overdose. Dylan waved his hand in understanding. “Anyway, Trance kept an emergency store. It was mostly sedatives, so that’s what you got. That’s why you’ve been so out of it. Sorry about that.”

Dylan laughed. “You saved my leg and you kept me out of pain, Beka. I’d say you did a fine job of taking care of your crew.” 

She smiled. “Coffee’s ready,” she answered, grabbing the pot off the stove with a towel to keep from burning her fingers. She poured them each a cupful. “There’s no sugar or anything, so…”

“Black is good,” Dylan replied, inhaling the strong scent appreciatively. He took a sip, letting the bitter taste revive his senses. “Very good.”

“Here’s to that,” Beka replied, taking a sip of her own. She smiled again, quite genuinely. 

“So,” Dylan pushed on. “Speaking of crew…” 

“Ah.” Beka’s tone turned evasive. “Harper is out getting parts.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Dylan, you need to understand, we took a lot of damage. We could barely land. Right now, we couldn’t even launch, let alone make it to slipstream. And this system? Not one that you want to be limping around in. There’s a lot to repair.”

“No, I mean, care to elaborate on what Harper’s doing? Getting parts how, and from whom?” Something wasn’t right, and he’d had a hunch that ‘something’ had to do with the engineer. Beka’s behaviour confirmed his suspicion; she’d stood and started pacing as she spoke, and he wasn’t sure she was even aware of it. 

Beka looked down and took a breath. When she met Dylan’s eyes again, she looked anxious. “Let’s just say that what he’s doing is legal – on this planet.” 

Dylan nodded slowly. He gestured at the chair across from him and Beka sat down again, gingerly, still worried. He smiled at her, but his mind was ruminating over all the bits and pieces of conversation he’d picked up in the last few days. They drank their coffee in silence for a few minutes. Then suddenly, something clicked in his mind. “Beka,” he asked, using his best non-threatening, I’m-not-judging-I’m-just-worried-about-my-crew voice, “Is Harper – is he…” he struggled to find a polite way of saying it, and then gave up and forged ahead. “Is Harper prostituting himself for engine parts?”

Beka looked like she might cry. “You heard us fighting,” she replied, her voice quiet, ashamed. “Don’t get mad at him, Dylan. Please don’t. Harper’s not – he’s a good person. I swear. I know he acts like a total doofus sometimes but he is not a…” she choked on the word, “whore.”

“He’s doing what he has to do,” Dylan replied, talking to himself more than to Beka. 

“This isn’t a good place, where we’re at, Dylan. We don’t have any weapons other than your force lance and our guns – and trust me, those would not carry us through here. You need big guns – Tyr-sized guns – if you want to steal something on Marius 12. Everyone else is armed to the teeth. We’ve got nothing to trade, we’ve got no currency…”

“I understand. I do.” Dylan’s voice was heavy. “I have a question, though… uh… not to be rude or anything, but I mean – Harper’s… well, Harper’s a man. Why is he… I mean, why aren’t you – not that you would, not that you are, but –”

“Because I wouldn’t let her,” another voice replied. Beka closed her eyes, a look of dread and regret hardening her features. Dylan whipped around in his chair to come face to face with his chief engineer, who despite his hard-soled boots had somehow snuck up on both of them like a cat. 

“Harper,” Dylan started, then trailed off, having no idea what to say. He looked the younger man up and down. Harper looked worse than Dylan felt. There was a cut above his eye that looked a few days old, the skin discoloured around it. His clothes were covered in grease, his hair was limp and dirty, and there were cuts and bruises on his fingers and all up his arms. They disappeared into his baggy old t-shirt, but Dylan saw the faint outline of other bruises up by his collarbone – finger sized bruises, the kind that were made when someone grabbed on tight and didn’t let go. He felt anger boiling up inside him and tried to swallow it down. Too late. As he watched, Harper’s eyes narrowed, even as he smiled brightly. 

“I should charge for looking,” he said, and Dylan flushed, looking away, as Harper stepped past him. Beka gave him a hopeless look. 

“Give him a break, Harper,” she tried. “He doesn’t -”

“How about we don’t, this morning, okay, Beka? I’m tired, I’m dirty, I have a lot of work ahead of me and hey – is that coffee?” Determinedly changing the subject, he grabbed the remaining mug, filled it to the brim, and then took off in the opposite direction of where he’d come in. “You know where I’ll be,” he called, his voice perfectly cheerful, as he vanished around the corner. 

Dylan sat stone-still in his chair, his heart heavy. The room was completely silent until Beka punched the wall. “Ow,” she said simply. 

“Beka.” He stood as quickly as he could and went over to her. “Let me see.” It was a pretense at taking authority, and they both knew it, but Dylan needed to do something and Beka needed to be comforted, so she held out her bleeding hand and he took it softly between his, checking the wound. “Cold pack?” he asked, still holding her hand. 

“Med area,” she replied. He walked her there, never letting go, and she leaned into him as they moved. “He looked so upset,” she said when they got into the relative privacy of the treatment room. “He didn’t want you to know.”

“He thinks I’m judging him.” Dylan replied, gently placing the cold pack against Beka’s hand and covering it with his own. 

“Of course he does, Dylan. You’re so… clean. We’re so…” she gestured around the Maru. “I mean, we cobble together our supplies, we cobble together our engine… Trance steals, I run illegal cargo. Do you know that we once sent Rev out begging so that we could get enough money to pay our docking fees? Rev. Begging.”

“Desperate times, Beka.” He lifted the cold pack, pleased to see there was no swelling on her hand, and reached for a bandage. “I know you don’t think that I understand that, but I do.”

“Then why would you get angry at him? I told you not to!”

Dylan’s eyes widened. “What? No!” He shook his head vehemently. “Not at him, Beka. Not at Harper! At – didn’t you see the bruises? I’m not naïve, Beka. I know how he got those. Someone had their very big hands around my engineer’s neck while he -” He broke off, unable to finish that sentence. “And now, we’re, what? We’re going to stand around making coffee while Harper repairs the ship?”

Beka shrugged. “It’s what captains do,” she offered. Dylan just shook his head. “I tried to help,” she said quietly. “He feels bad about what he’s doing. He doesn’t want to be reminded. He told me to go away. I’ve been working on the piloting systems.”

“I understand. And I know Harper’s had a bad life. I’ve seen how he just brushes things aside, ignores it, buries it. But…” Dylan ground his teeth in frustration. “That’s not the kind of world I want to build, Beka. I don’t want to have a commonwealth that was put together by pushing smaller men to their knees. Literally.” He threw the bandage wrappings toward the waste disposal unit and walked away. 

“Please leave him alone!” Beka cried, but Dylan didn’t turn around. 

**

Harper was knee deep in wires when Dylan found him. “Uh – hey, boss,” he said as soon as he saw the older man. “I’m good, really. Just workin’ away. Don’t need anything. You don’t have to worry. I’ll have the Maru up and running in… well, soon. I think. I’m doing everything I can here. Just two hands, right…”

“How much do you think I’m worth?” Dylan asked, lowering himself down to the catwalk gingerly, his left leg unbendable. 

The question brought Harper’s babble to an abrupt stop for a moment. “What?” he asked. “Oh. No. Boss, really, that’s – no. It’s fine. It’s… I’ve done it before. It’s not a big deal. You don’t have to – you shouldn’t…” He stopped, flustered, not meeting Dylan’s eyes. Dylan slid over to where Harper was trying to splice two wires together, head down. He put his hand gently on the younger man’s shoulder. 

“Harper,” he said quietly, and waited until the engineer, almost against his will, glanced up. Their eyes met for a second and in that second, Dylan saw all the anguish and sadness Harper was hiding behind his non-stop talk and joking. Then Harper looked away. Dylan rubbed Harper’s shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting way. “If you think for a moment I am going to let one of my crew put themselves in a position where they can be hurt and…” he swallowed the word ‘abused’ before it could come out, afraid that might be pushing it. “Well, think again. If there is anything that needs to be done to help us get the hell out of here, then we’re all in it.”

“Not Beka.” Harper’s voice was small. 

“Agreed.” 

“Boss – you really wouldn’t. I mean you haven’t – have you?”

“First time for everything,” Dylan replied, putting on a brave face. He had absolutely no idea what he was doing. 

Harper smiled, a genuine, real Harper smile, not the fake covering smile. “Thanks, boss. But you can’t. I can’t let you. I mean – first of all you’re hurt. Second of all, you’re big. They… they like little. And thirdly, I mean, yeah, this planet is a trash heap, but word gets out, you know? You’re the face of the commonwealth. It would be a public relations nightmare.”

“All valid arguments, Mr. Harper. On the other hand, my engineer is tired, in pain, and in an impossible situation, and as his captain it’s my duty to do whatever I can to fix that.” He felt the tense muscles in Harper’s shoulders relax, just fractionally. 

“You want to help? Hand me that welder.” Harper replied. 

Dylan nodded, leaning back to reach for the tool. Harper took it from him and wielded it one-handed as he replaced the covering that held in the wires he’d just fixed, holding the cover steady with his other hand. “Ow,” he said, absentmindedly, trying to work the welder around his hand, burning his arm in the process. 

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Dylan muttered. “This is what I’m talking about. Here.” He shifted over so that he could hold the panel in place by its top edge. “No wonder your hands are all cut up. After we finish this section, you’re going to the med area. Do not argue with me, Mr. Harper,” he continued, seeing the protest forming in Harper’s expression. 

“Geez,” the younger man mumbled instead. “Man offers to turn tricks for ya, next thing you know he thinks he’s your boss. That’s really not how it works in the real world, you know.”

Dylan laughed. “I know,” he assured. “I promise, when it comes to the engine repair, you are the boss.”

“Good. Then hand me that screwdriver.”

**

Beka glanced at them anxiously as they walked past the cockpit on their way to the Med area a few hours later. Harper smiled at her. “Hey, Beka, whatcha doin? Oh, you’re rewiring the navigation system, that’s good, here, I can lend you hand…” Dylan’s hand fell down heavily on his shoulder to steer him away from the detour he was starting to make, and all three of them noticed Harper flinch. Dylan snatched his hand away, but didn’t move out of the younger man’s way. 

“Med area, Mr. Harper. No arguing.” Harper cast a desperate glance at Beka, but she only shrugged back, giving him a sympathetic smile. 

“Fine,” he huffed, and stomped off, putting some distance between Dylan and himself. Dylan slowed his pace and let Harper get there first. When he walked through the door, sliding it shut behind him, Harper was sitting up on the examining table with his sleeves rolled up. “Okay, do your thing and let’s get back to work, eh, boss?” he said, smiling hopefully. 

“Take your shirt off, Harper. Please.” Dylan replied, pulling together antiseptics, bandages, and topical ointments from the Maru’s mostly bare medical storage shelves. He turned around to see Harper, still fully clothed, looking up at him with a wary, caged expression on his face. “Harper, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to make sure whatever scrapes and bruises you have get cleaned so you don’t end up with an infection.”

“Right,” Harper agreed, but made no move to undress. “But – just, it is what it is, okay boss?” 

Dylan wasn’t sure what that meant, but he nodded in agreement. 

“Okay.” Harper took a deep breath, and then pulled his shirt up over his head. “Probably should change that anyhow,” he observed, studying the stains that covered it before letting it drop to the floor. Dylan got his first good look at his engineer. He considered it a major accomplishment that he didn’t show much reaction. Harper’s upper body was a mess. In addition to the blackening bruises along his collarbone and neck, there were purple bruises on his upper arms, where someone had clearly held him down. There was a large gash across his back that was starting to scab, though in places it was still oozing blood from being reopened when Harper moved. It crossed his right shoulder and cut down into a diagonal, disappearing into the waistband of his pants. Smaller gashes surrounded it, not as deep. He’d been kicked a few times, too, if Dylan wasn’t mistaken. It is what it is, indeed. 

He walked up beside Harper – carefully moving to stand in front of him – and got busy cleaning up the burn Harper had most recently given himself. Harper stared straight ahead and Dylan did his best to keep his eyes focused narrowly on what he was doing, but he couldn’t help stealing surreptitious glances at the bruised and battered body before him. Finally Harper pulled away, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “I really cannot do this right now,” he said in a low voice. 

“I’m sorry, Harper. I know it’s… difficult. But I really need to finish. At least just let me treat your back.” 

Harper shook his head, his eyes a little too wide. “N-no. No, it’s fine. I’ll just go take a shower. I’ll be fine.” He hopped down off the bed and started edging away toward the door. 

Dylan quite deliberately stepped in the opposite direction so that Harper had an easy escape route if he needed it. Clearly even being shirtless with him was putting the younger man on edge. “Harper,” he said quietly. “Seamus. What you’re doing – you need to stop. It’s too dangerous.”

Harper laughed bitterly. “Can’t stop now, boss. We’re only halfway through. I’ve got a whole list of things we need before the Maru’ll fly again. And, well – the more damaged I get, the lower my price gets, which means, you know, more customers for less. That’s the way it works.”

“We’ll find another way.”

Harper drew a ragged breath. “This place? It sucks, boss. There’s not a lot in the way of ‘ways’, if you know what I mean.”

“I’ll find another way. Just give me some time. Just – don’t go out tonight. Stay here on the Maru. Rest. Just give me tonight. And – and if you won’t let me treat your back, then let Beka do it.”

Harper shook his head. “No, not Beka. She’s upset enough already. You can… do what you need to do.” He returned to the table and sat again, hunching over, his back to Dylan. 

“Okay,” Dylan replied, trying to keep his voice as soft and soothing as he could. “It’s okay, Harper.” He spread the antiseptic gel across the gashes, pulling out fibers that were caught in the wound as gently as he could. Harper winced, but didn’t pull away. Dylan wanted to ask, what did they beat you with? When? Who? Where can I find them and kill them? But he didn’t dare. When he finished, he pulled away and put some space between them. “Let that soak in for a few minutes, and then you can take your shower,” Dylan directed. “Afterwards I’ll put some bandages on those cuts, okay?”

Harper nodded. “Hey, Dylan?” He called, just as Dylan was walking out the door. The older man turned around. 

“Yeah?”

“Listen, I’m – I’m doing my best; I did what I thought was our best chance, you know?”

Dylan smiled at the younger man, feeling grief clutch at his heart. A constant reminder of how different things were now. “I know, Harper. You’ve done an exceptional job. You’ve done great.” He walked out before he lost his self-control and tried to engulf the skittish young man in a hug. 

**

Beka was waiting for him in crew quarters. She’d fished out a clean set of clothes and a couple of shabby old towels. “Like I said, we don’t have a lot,” she said as she handed them to Dylan. 

“You were listening?” Dylan narrowed his eyes. 

Beka rolled hers. “I heard the shower come on, and I know you can’t get your brace wet.” 

“Sorry.” Dylan gave her a sheepish look. “Listen, Beka… somebody beat up Harper pretty bad.”

“With a rope, yeah. One of his first clients. It’s how the guy got off.”

“You knew.” 

“Yeah. I followed him out. I had this big plan that I was gonna roll his client and take all the cash before Harper could, you know, get started.”

“It didn’t work.”

“I walked in on them. Harper was leaning over a desk and the guy was… well, you saw the cuts. The man had good aim; he hit the same spot almost every time. I raised my gun – and his internal defense systems kicked in and started firing at me. The only reason I got away was because Harper distracted the guy… I don’t know what he had to do but when he got back to the Maru, he was pissed. He wouldn’t speak to me all day.”

“So you stopped trying.”

Beka sighed, wringing her hands. “The next night, that’s when we had our big fight. He locked me to the catwalk so that I couldn’t follow him. The night after that, he brought home a vid of what they did to a young woman who was out past curfew. It… wasn’t pretty. Women are considered property here. Public property. Any man can discipline any woman he finds doing something he doesn’t think she should be doing – like walking in the wrong way, wearing the wrong clothes, talking at the wrong time…”

“That’s why you can’t go instead of him.”

Beka shook her head. “There are women who… do what Harper’s doing; it’s just a lot more dangerous. But that’s not why Harper is fighting to keep me from going.” Dylan just looked at her. “He doesn’t want to see me degraded the way… he thinks it’s okay if it happens to him. And I -”

“It’s okay, Beka. No one’s doing it anymore. I’ll find another way.” Behind them, the noise of the shower stopped. “Well, that’s my cue,” he smiled as he backed out of the crew quarters, leaving Beka alone once more. 

** 

Harper seemed a little more relaxed after the shower. He talked away at Dylan about how far the repairs had come and what was left to do as Dylan bandaged up his back and finished applying ointment to the burns on his arms. He made a bit of a face at the clothes Dylan offered, but exchanged them for the shabby old towel without too much hesitation. Dylan bit back a laugh. The clothes were at least three sizes too big for the young man, who had to roll up the sleeves and the pant legs just to be functional. 

“At least they’re clean,” Dylan offered. 

“They’re Bobby’s,” Harper sneered back. Dylan made a mental note to ask Beka who Bobby was at some point. “But yeah, clean is good,” the engineer admitted a moment later, combing his hands through his hair in a vain effort to tame it. “Well, back to the salt mines – er, engines, I guess.”

“Hey Harper? Where’s that list of parts you still need?”

Harper looked back at him, wary. “Why do you wanna know?” he returned.

Dylan shrugged. “I’m a High Guard Captain. Maybe there’s some sort of workaround I can help you figure out.”

Harper watched him suspiciously for a moment longer, then relented. “It’s on my bunk,” he replied. “Knock yourself out. I don’t think you’re going to be able to work around most of ‘em though.”

Dylan shrugged again. “Let’s see what I can do,” he replied. He could tell Harper was waiting to hear whether the captain was going to press him any further, but he kept his mouth shut. His decision was confirmed as correct when Harper visibly relaxed. 

“Okee dokee, see ya later.” Harper disappeared around the corner. 

“Yeah, see ya…” Dylan let the innocent look fall from his face, his brow furrowing and his eyes darkening. Now all he needed was a really good plan…

**

Dylan was so engrossed in his calculations, trying desperately to figure out some way of making the damn ship work with what they already had, that he almost missed the sound of the airlock closing. He limped over, bootless, from where he’d been laying on his bunk to peer out the window at Harper’s back as the other man trudged away. 

Dylan caught up to him about four blocks away from where the Maru had been towed after it crash-landed. Harper gave him a dirty look, not slowing down, so Dylan matched his pace. “I thought I asked you to stay in tonight,” he said. 

“Actually, you told me to, but I never said I would,” Harper replied. Dylan gave him a quick once-over. His new, clean clothes were a bit worse for wear after an afternoon of engine repair, but nowhere near as bad as the previous set. He seemed okay, physically, but his face was white, even though it was set and determined, and his fists were clenched. 

“Harper. Harper!” Dylan put a hand on Harper’s arm to stop him, and was shocked at the ferocity in Harper’s expression as the younger man swung around to glare at him. 

“What, Dylan? I’m already dirty, so what does it matter?” He jerked his arm away and rushed off, quickening his pace. Dylan tried to keep up, but his leg was aching. He tried to stop, catch his breath, and suddenly found himself on his ass, gasping, red dots blurring his vision. “Oh, for crying out loud,” a voice said above him. Harper reached down and tried ineffectively to haul him to his feet. Even though it hurt like hell, Dylan gave himself a push, struggling to his feet, and Harper slung the older man’s arm around his shoulder. “You are unbelievable, you know that?”

Dylan gripped Harper’s shoulder as they staggered back the direction they came. “Thanks for coming back,” he gasped. 

“Yeah, well, who’s the hero now, big guy?” Harper grumbled all the way back to the Maru. 

**

“Just knock him out for me, will ya, Beka?” Harper griped as they walked in the door. 

“I can probably manage that for you,” a strange voice replied. Dylan, who’d been leaning hard on Harper with his head hanging low for the last block, suddenly jerked upright. He could feel Harper tense up underneath his arm, winding tight like a spring, muscles trembling. Before him stood a wall of a man, with a really big gun, pointed directly at Beka’s head. He had her hands tied behind her back and it looked like he had hit her. “Your woman was being uncooperative,” the man continued. 

“Women are like that,” Harper replied, his voice soft, before Dylan could find his voice. 

“I could take care of her, if you want. Take care of him, too.”

“Nah. How about we let him take care of her, and I’ll take care of you?” Harper’s voice was still soft, but carried a suggestive edge to it. He gave the man a sly smile, even though Dylan could feel the engineer’s body still shaking. 

The man grinned and holstered his weapon. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he laughed. “Reidrich told me you were good. I figured I’d come find out for myself.”

“I’m always up for referrals. Beka, take Dylan.” Beka stumbled forward and Harper pulled Dylan’s arm across her shoulder. “Untie her when you get away from here, don’t do it before then,” he whispered, looking Dylan in the eyes. 

“Harper…” Dylan kept his voice low, managing to not growl the word out in his anger and worry. Harper shook his head quickly. 

“Bad idea, boss. Just let me do my thing. Off you go now,” he said in a louder voice, giving Beka’s butt a quick swat as if to send her on her way. He turned away from them, ignoring them as Beka hauled Dylan out the door. “Now, let’s get acquainted, shall we?” He purred, just as the doors swished close. 

Beka pulled them down to the Med area and dumped Dylan on the examination table. He quickly untied her hands, inspecting her wrists for any chafing. 

“Dylan,” she said, her eyes wide. 

“I know, Beka.”

“We have weapons.”

“And he has friends. And the Maru can’t fly.” And I can barely walk. “Harper was right.”

“You said you’d find a way,” she said, accusingly, and he looked up at her, devastated, about to get angry, but then she burst into tears and he pulled her close into an embrace instead. 

I will find a way, he thought. I will figure this out. I will fix it. 

**

They heard the man laughing as he stomped through the halls, Harper’s tone a faint murmur underneath his bass. The airlock opened, and then shut again, and then there was silence for a few minutes before the shower started up. Dylan let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Beka had retreated to a corner of the Med area, organizing and reorganizing the few supplies that were there. 

“I should go check on him,” she said now, wringing her hands. 

“Beka,” Dylan stopped her as she walked by. “Let me do it. He – he doesn’t want to upset you.”

“But he’s family, Dylan,” she replied, tears threatening again. 

“Exactly,” he said. “I’m a little easier to take. Harper doesn’t feel bad if I feel bad. If you feel bad, he feels worse, do you know what I mean?”

“I can’t just sit around doing nothing,” she said. “I’ve been doing that for days. Things are getting out of control. “

“I know. That’s why I need you to look at Harper’s list of outstanding repairs and figure out if there’s anything, anything at all that we can do without, or that we can jury rig, or work around – anything. Anything that’ll get us off this planet before one of Harper’s clients…” He couldn’t finish that thought. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. 

“Right.” Beka straightened her shoulders and stalked out. Dylan eased himself off the table and limped off the other way. 

He found Harper slumped against the wall in the shower room, wrapped in the towels Dylan had given him earlier. He looked young and small and tired. “Hey, boss,” he managed when Dylan walked in, easing himself awkwardly down on the edge of the toilet, but there was no light in the younger man’s eyes and he didn’t even try to smile.

“Tell me what happened, Harper,” Dylan commanded. 

“Rather not talk about it.”

“We need to talk about it.”

“No, we fucking don’t.” It was the first time he’d ever heard Harper swear, although an idle part of his mind bet that Rommie had probably heard it a hundred times. Dylan slid to the floor and stretched out his arms. 

“Come here, Harper,” he said. “Let me… let me dry your hair.” 

Harper just looked at him like he was nuts. Well, he probably was. He had no idea what he was doing; he was just going on his gut. He rolled his eyes and gestured at the younger man. Harper sighed, but relented, scooting over so that his back was facing Dylan. Dylan ignored the rage he felt bubbling up at the sight of fresh bruises on the other man’s arm, and instead focused on doing something nice, something pleasurable, something gentle for Harper. He took the towel and rubbed it through Harper’s spiky blond hair, soaking up the water, and then set the towel aside and just rubbed his hands across the other man’s head, massaging his scalp, slowly working down to Harper’s neck, being very, very careful to avoid the bruises and the gash on his back, just rubbing gently, calmly. Slowly, he felt Harper ease up, just a little, then a little more, leaning back into his touch. Eventually, he shifted so his hands could rub, so lightly, down Harper’s arms and Harper leaned against him, resting his head against Dylan’s shoulder. Later still, Dylan stopped rubbing at all, and just encircled the smaller man in his embrace. 

“Dylan?” Harper said a while later, sounding nervous. 

“Yeah, Harper?” Dylan answered softly. 

“This is – pretty scary.”

“Yeah. Not the best situation we’ve ever been in.”

“No.”

Dylan held him a little more firmly, taking slow deep breaths that he was pleased to see Harper imitate. “I’m sorry, Harper,” Dylan said after a moment. 

“For what?” Harper had shut his eyes; now he opened them and turned his head to get a glimpse of Dylan’s face. 

“For thinking I knew better than you what to do here. For making you a promise I couldn’t keep. For – thinking I could fix this when I can’t even walk. I’m sorry.”

Harper smiled and leaned back again. “S’okay, boss. It’s not the world you knew. I get that. But there’s some good news.”

“What’s that?”

“Taulomie, Reidrich’s friend, paid me enough to buy the parts I need to fix our com link. We should be able to send a message to Rommie by tomorrow.”

Dylan breathed a huge sigh of relief. “That is good news. Well done, Mr. Harper.” He winced as soon as he said it. “I mean – uh…”

“It’s good, I’m good,” Harper said. “But, uh? The bad news is, Taulomie, uh, he wants to do another house call. I didn’t really feel like I was in a position to say no, you know? But, this is bad. It’s very bad. Because he might start coming after you or… or…”

“Beka.”

Harper was tense in his arms again. “You gotta protect her, boss, no matter what else happens. You gotta look after Beka.”

“I will,” Dylan promised. “Now settle down, it’s going to be okay.”

“I doubt it,” Harper whispered, but he leaned back against the other man again and closed his eyes. It took Dylan a few minute to realize the engineer had fallen asleep.

**

“Any luck?” Dylan whispered to Beka. They were both standing in the crew quarters, looking down at Harper, who’d been roused long enough to crawl into bed and fall asleep again. Tucked under his blanket, he looked like an exhausted child. Dylan knew he should move away if he wanted to talk, but somehow he just couldn’t bring himself to leave. 

“Yeah, sort of,” Beka whispered back. “I can show you, if you can manage to tear your eyes away from my engineer.”

“Our engineer,” he whispered, glad to hear the teasing tone in Beka’s voice. He really didn’t think he’d have been able to cope if she’d completely fallen apart. Rolling his eyes in her general direction, he reluctantly turned away from Harper’s beside and followed her out into the hall. “What’s up?” he asked once he had closed the door. 

“I noticed something weird on Harper’s list,” she explained. “Here, see?” she handed him the flexi. “At first I couldn’t figure out why Harper would want to purchase weapons parts - ship to ship missiles are about the only thing on the Maru that isn’t broken. Then I went down to engineering.” Dylan had been walking and reading beside her, and looked up to realize that she’d led him down to the catwalk. “See? He’s been reconfiguring the fuel tanks. He didn’t want the weapons for the weaponry. He just wanted the protons.”

“To light a fire under us.”

“And launch us into space. He’s done something similar before – actually, that’s how we got you out of the black hole. If we had sufficient fire power, we could break orbit and let inertia do the rest. We could reach a slip point.”

“I thought the drive was broken.”

Beka shrugged. “It was. But Harper fixed it. Sort of – it’s got enough juice for one good jump, if we can just get far enough out. It’s the launcher that’s wrecked. Harper was already working on a shortcut.”

“So we can bypass Harper’s… purchasing plans. We just need to find a way to generate a lot of protons.”

“Way ahead of you. I can rig the Maru to create a containment field, so that when protons are released, she collects and stores them. All we have to do -”

“Is get someone to start a fight on the Maru.” Dylan finished for her. 

Beka smiled. “Exactly.”

“I think I can manage that, Beka,” Dylan replied, handing her back her flexi. For the first time since the crash, he felt a loosening in the pit of his stomach. The worry and the fear were still there, but the hopelessness and the powerlessness – those were easing just a little. Because now, finally, they had a real plan. 

**

“No way,” Harper said when they told him the next morning. “Bad plan. Very bad plan.”

“Good plan, Harper. ‘Way to go Beka’. Let’s get the hell out of here,” Beka argued back. But Harper didn’t smile, not even slightly. He didn’t even look at her. He just looked over her to glare at Dylan. 

“It won’t work. Don’t get me wrong, my… client has the right weaponry. But let’s assume that you and Beka manage to draw him away from me so that he doesn’t force a surrender out of you right off the bat. Even if he unloaded his entire charge trying to get you – assuming he never lands one, single shot on target, which I doubt would happen – but even if it did, it won’t be enough. It might get us off the ground but we’d never break orbit.”

“So we find a way to make sure he brings more guns,” Dylan suggested, as if it were perfectly reasonable. 

Harper hit the table in despair. “Are you out of your mind?” he shouted. Beka flinched. Dylan gently laid a hand on the small of her back, reminding her that they were in it together. Harper was vibrating with rage. “If we convince him to bring along Riedrich and maybe one or two other friends, here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to fail. We are going to lose. They will kill you, they will break me, and they will take Beka as compensation. And I won’t – I won’t be able to stop them and I won’t be able to get her back because I’m not strong enough, and you’ll be dead, and even if Rommie comes here they will still have… No.” Harper started to cry. “Dylan, please don’t do this. A few more… a few more tricks and I’ll have enough money to buy what we need. Please.”

“Harper,” Dylan said, stepping around Beka and crouching down in front of the younger man, who sat slumped in his chair, shoulders shaking. “It’s a dangerous, dangerous plan. I know that. But in all honesty, I’m not sure that you can take a… few more tricks. And just the fact that he came here – that he broke into our ship… they aren’t playing by any rules. We have to do more than just cross our fingers that you get the parts we need before somebody kills you for the fun of it.” There. He’d said it, the thing he’d been thinking ever since he first saw the bruises around Harper’s neck, the ugly truth that they’d all ignored. 

“Better me than Beka,” was all Harper said in reply, his face buried in his hands. 

That got Beka moving. She nudged Dylan out of the way, squatted down, and pulled Harper into a tight embrace. “It is not okay for it to be you,” she told him. “This is not okay. It better be none of us.” 

Harper couldn’t speak. He just leaned against her shoulder and cried. 

**

In the end, they had to give him a sedative to calm him down. He lay in Beka’s bunk now, her blanket and Trance’s blanket both pulled snug around him, asleep. 

“What do we do now?” Beka whispered as they watched him. 

Dylan allowed himself a moment to acknowledge the irony of how much he resented her looking to him to take charge now, when up until this point he’d put everything he had into being their Captain and they’d simply ignored his authority. Then he made his decision. “We work both plans. You work on your containment field. I’ll move forward with Harper’s work on the engines.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know, Beka. I honestly don’t know.”

**

Dylan didn’t ask and Beka didn’t say anything, but he was pretty sure she’d snuck into crew quarters at some point and slipped Harper more sedative, because the young engineer slept long and hard, not waking until well into the next evening, and when he did, he was groggy and confused. By that time, Dylan had managed to complete most of the repairs to the slipstream drive and the nav system, so that when they made their one jump, they didn’t accidentally end up jumping straight into a sun. 

Beka had made some headway on the containment field as well, although to be honest, even when Dylan joined her to assist, they were only guessing at the right way to do things. They didn’t mention anything when the three of them sat down for an evening meal, and Harper fell asleep quickly after eating, so they bumbled on into the night until they both stumbled back to bed, exhausted. 

Dylan woke alone the next morning. Voices were once again echoing along the Maru’s corridors. 

“…dirty damn trick and you know it,” Harper said. Beka mumbled something inaudible in reply. Dylan sighed and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, pushing Trance’s blanket aside. 

“Won’t work,” Harper was saying now, obnoxiously. “We need a proton converter. You can’t just pump weapons grade – Beka if you break that I swear I will end you!”

Dylan started thumping down the corridor as fast as he could, but when he finally got to the engine room, a little winded, there was nothing broken, and no one had been ended. “What’s going on?” he demanded, his tone harsher than he intended as he gasped for air. 

“What’s going on?” Harper repeated, swinging around on him. “What’s going on is you drugged me and made a mess of everything behind my back!”

“Harper, it’s not that bad, we weren’t that far off,” Beka protested. 

“The proton collector,” Dylan summarized. “How badly did we screw it up?”

Harper just gave him a dirty look. “Well, that depends,” he replied. “If you happen to have a lot of raw fuel just kicking around that you haven’t told me about, then you’re totally fine. you want it to collect weapons-grade protons and convert them into engine-grade fuel, I’d say you screwed the pooch big time. This piece of junk isn’t going to work.”

“Not at all?” Dylan replied, his heart sinking. 

Harper relented. “Well – alright. It’s not so bad. It’s one step closer to finished than we were before my big nap. But we’re going to need a converter or it’s not going to work.”

“Can we build one?”

Harper shrugged. “I don’t think so, boss. This is a plug-n-play kind of thing. Strictly purchase. You need something that will filter the protons so that it converts into the kind of electrical charge that the engine needs to go, y’know, whoosh.” He tapped his fingers against the side of the machine. “I might be able to rig a medical processor,” he mused. 

“Great. What’s it look like? I’ll go grab it from the Med Bay.”

Beka sighed. “The Maru doesn’t have one,” she replied. 

“You can get ‘em pretty cheap, though,” Harper said. “I’d just need…”

“No, Harper!” Beka and Dylan said together. 

Harper threw his hands up in frustration. “One part!” he shouted. “We’re one part short. One more… hell, even just a handjob might get me enough money if I can find the right mark. It’ll take an hour, maybe two.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Dylan started. 

“We have to get off this rock,” Harper shouted. He drew himself up to his full height. “I don’t care what either of you say. I’m going.” He pushed back Dylan with more strength than Dylan expected, and headed for the catwalk. 

“Perimeter alert,” the Maru said. “Perimeter alert.”

Ahead of him, Dylan watched Harper’s shoulders slump. “Too late,” he whispered. 

“Perimeter alert.”

**  
“How many?” Dylan demanded, once again breathless. Harper and Beka had taken off ahead of him, first to the gun locker and then to the nearest security station. 

“Four,” Beka replied, counting the blips on the screen. They were inside the alarm perimeter, moving methodically toward the airlock that Taulomie had broken through for his home visit two nights’ prior. 

“Five,” Harper corrected. 

“There’s only four –”

“Reidrich’s not there. He’ll come.” He handed two of the guns over to Dylan, and as soon as Dylan had holstered the first, followed them with his force lance. 

A fifth blip appeared on the screen. 

“Holy shit,” Beka said. “Look at the firepower on that one.”

Harper glared at her, but spared the ‘I told you so,’ handing her weapons over. “I’ve rigged the canon to start firing the moment the airlock is opened,” he said tersely. “It doesn’t have much of a charge, so you won’t have a lot of time before they advance. It might take out one of them if we’re lucky. You guys need to stay out of harm’s way but stay visible enough to get them to keep shooting. Especially Reidrich. We’re going to need every bit of the power he’s carrying if we have any hope of getting enough energy collected.”

“I thought you said that it wouldn’t work,” Dylan replied, still trying to catch up his thinking. 

“It’s the only hope we’ve got now,” Harper replied. He looked over at Beka. “It’s a good thing you got going on that, Beka,” he said. “If we’d waited…”

“Forget it,” Beka replied, responding to the unspoken apology. “Get your skinny butt down to the engine room. I can make ‘em shoot.”

Harper looked like he was about to say something else, but then just nodded, breaking eye contact. Dylan grabbed his arm on the way by but couldn’t find any words. Harper patted his hand. “Stay safe, boss,” he said. Then he was gone. 

“Warning,” The Maru intoned. “Forced breach in outer airlock 2. Warning.”  
“Let’s move,” Beka whispered, dragging Dylan back into the twisted catwalk corridors of the ship. He thumped along as fast as he could, then crammed himself into the smallest space he could fit, ignoring the screaming pain as he forced the knee of his broken leg to bend. Beka gave his arm a squeeze and then vanished. 

“Warning,” The Maru continued. “Forced breach in inner airlock 2. Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Intruder alert.”

**  
There was a moment of calm. Dylan took a breath, then another. Then the cannon started firing. All around him there was a sudden buzzing, like a low-frequency radio wave, as the proton collector started sucking in the cannon energy. Above the bass-toned thwoop, thwoop, thwoop of the cannon fire there was a loud whine and a rifle answered back in a higher range. The gun fired maybe half a dozen times and then there was a scream. 

“Damn,” he heard Beka whisper, out of sight, somewhere above and to the left of him. The cannon had done its job, but too quickly. The first intruder hadn’t emptied his weapon. There was a rumbling of loud voices and then a small explosion and the cannon stopped thwooping. The collectors buzzed more loudly for a few extended moments, sucking up the protons released by the cannon’s demise. 

Then it got quiet again. “Find them,” he heard a guttural voice command – not Taulomie. Reidrich, Dylan guessed. “I’ll break that little weasel myself.”

From above, Beka started firing. “It’s the woman!” someone yelled. Shots were fired back. The collectors sang. He heard Beka scrambling away, disappearing from his ability to sense her. He raised his force lance, aimed for the metal across the hall, and took his shot. His aim was perfect – the shot bounced off the hull and echoed down the corridor. Stomping feet, at least two sets, followed it, accompanied by shots. He fired again and again, and so did they. 

“You idiots!” Taulomie screamed. “He’s over here!” 

Dylan lowered his lance and pulled out his first pistol. Seconds later the large man that had breached the Maru before came around the corner. They locked eyes. “You.” Taulomie raised his weapon. 

He got off one shot that went high as his smoking body toppled to the ground. Dylan had always been a fast shot. 

“Yes,” Dylan replied, “me.” With difficulty he pulled himself out of his hiding spot, grabbing Taulomie’s weapon and firing shots back toward the hall that the others had run down. He backed down the corridor he was in, hearing the exchange of weapons fire getting closer behind his ears. He was catching up to Beka. 

One of the men whipped around the corner. Dylan ducked behind a control panel as the man shot wildly, emptying a whole cartridge into the room. The collectors were practically screaming with electricity now. When the man stopped to reload, Dylan pushed up and fired back, emptying Taulomie’s entire load into the man’s body. It twitched and smoked. 

“You son of a bitch!” a voice cried out, and the second man came flying around. Dylan didn’t have time to duck. With a pang of regret, he fired his own weapon, taking the man out easily. 

“Dylan,” Beka’s voice whispered in his ear through their comm link. “I’ve got two on my tail and I’m out of ammo.” 

“I’m on my way,” he replied. He stooped and picked up the gun from his latest kill, then thumped down the hallway. As the corridor opened into the cockpit, he spied two men to his right, turning toward him as they heard his advance. He took the first out easily. The second, Reidrich, had spun and ducked at the same time. 

“Shit!” Dylan exclaimed as Reidrich’s oversized rifle swung around, aiming toward his head. He had just enough time to duck back down the corridor before it blasted out. He shot blankly back around the corner, hoping not to hit Beka by accident. The gun made a screeching sound. 

“Your weapon is empty,” it told him. 

Reidrich, within hearing distance, laughed. Dylan kept his head down and reached for the second gun Harper had handed him. 

Then there was a scream, followed by a loud thumping. “You bitch!” Reidrich bellowed. 

Dylan threw himself around the corner. Reidrich’s attention was distracted, his rifle pointed at the floor. Beka lay across from him, spitting something from her mouth. Reidrich’s other hand was raised to his ear, which was ragged and bleeding. As Dylan watched, Reidrich’s face hardened and he started to raise the rifle. 

“I don’t think so,” Dylan said, and shot him in the back. Beka scrambled out of the way as the big man toppled over. Then she stood, pulling the rifle from Reidrich’s dying hand, and turned it on its owner, blasting a hole the size of a small plate in his abdomen. 

“That ought to be enough charge, don’tcha think?” she said, panting.

“I’m sure it is,” Dylan replied, holstering his weapon. 

Beka nodded, dropping the rifle, and hustled over to the computer. A moment later, she swore, slamming her hand against the panel. 

“What’s the problem?” Dylan shouted, limping over. 

Beka leaned over the science station and jabbed at the controls in front of her. “It’s not working!” she shouted back, banging her hand on the edge of the consult. 

Dylan bit down on his tongue to keep from screaming. “What do the diagnostics say?” he asked through gritted teeth. 

She shot him a frustrated look. “It didn’t work,” she restated, “that’s what the fucking diagnostics say. We got enough juice and the collector collected, but it didn’t funnel into the power cells. We can’t break orbit.”

“There must be something we can do,” Dylan denied. 

“Yeah? Well, you tell me!” she screeched, turning around to face him fully, rage and desperation flushing her cheeks red. 

Suddenly Harper’s voice rang out: “Beka, get ready!”

Dylan looked around stupidly for a moment before he realized that the voice was coming over the Maru’s comm. system. Harper was plugged in somewhere, in the computer. “Harper, what’s going on?” He shouted. 

Instead of an answer he heard a gun discharge down the twisting corridor behind him. “Now, Beka, hurry!” Harper yelled through the Maru, his voice tight and tinny. The gun discharged again. The whole ship suddenly shook and hummed. 

Dylan still had no idea what was going on, but Beka seemed to clue in, because she swore and leapt over Reidrich’s still-twitching remains, crashing into the pilot seat and throwing open switches. A third gunshot rang out behind them and the Maru roared to life. “Hang on!” She yelled. Dylan had just enough time to brace himself to stop from flying over the railing as the Maru lurched toward space, hurtling upward at escape velocity. 

“We did it!” Dylan shouted as they broke orbit, a jubilant grin on his face. “Harper, you did it.”

There was no response. Harper was silent and Beka didn’t even turn around. “Entering slipstream,” she said, punching the drive. Panels and wires all around them sizzled as they accelerated into the Maru’s one good jump. Beka’s face was white as she navigated, whipping through subspace, coaxing the last few minutes of power out of her beaten ship. Abruptly she stopped, decelerating, and they fell out of slipstream in an empty asteroid belt, quiet all around them. 

Beka leapt from her seat and ran past Dylan down the corridor. “What’s going on?” He shouted after her, turning awkwardly in his brace and thumping down the track. He followed her into the engine room and then came up short, gasping in shock. 

“Help me!” Beka screamed up at him. She was tugging at Harper’s inert form. The younger man was sprawled against the railing, plugged into the Maru, with his gun loose in one hand and a gaping, bleeding hole in his abdomen. 

“My god,” Dylan breathed. “What did he do?”

Beka whirled on him, glaring. “Shut up and help me.” She had tears in her eyes. There was blood on the floor, dripping down through the open tracks into the engine core below. Beka pulled again and the gun fell from Harper’s hand, clanging uselessly against the steel walkway, all its power spent. Dylan watched it fall as if in slow motion. 

Then Beka shook him violently and screamed in his face, “help me lift him, now!”

Dylan shook himself and leaned down, lifting the younger man up into his arms. Beka had unjacked him from the Maru and Dylan took off, as fast as he could move, for the Med Deck, Beka on his heels. Harper lay still in his arms, his chest barely rising, blood dripping with every step. 

Beka scrambled for a suture kit and disinfectant. Wordlessly, Dylan took the latter and started cleaning the wound, tearing Harper’s shirt away from his stomach and pressing a bandage against the hole to try to staunch the flow of blood. He heard Beka shuffling through the Maru’s scant medical supplies and then she reappeared at his side with a plasma IV, which she hooked up with a practiced ease that Dylan dimly wondered at. Then she pushed his hands aside and started suturing. Together, they cleaned and stitched, cleaned, and stitched, until finally the wound was closed. Dylan pulled an emergency blanket out of its packaging and laid it across the engineer’s prone form. Beka added the last of the sedative to Harper’s IV. Finally, they leaned back and looked up at each other. Beka’s face showed the horror Dylan was feeling. 

“He shot himself,” Dylan said. 

Beka closed her eyes. “The proton field we created wasn’t focused enough; it was collecting the charge but it wasn’t funneling it into the engines. He told you that. He needed a conductor so that the juice would flow straight into the intake manifold.”

“By shooting himself.”

Beka threw up her hands. “You still don’t get it, do you, Dylan?” she cried. “Out here, you do what you have to do. Whatever you have to do.” She turned back to her friend, lying pale and still on the med bay bed. “He knew it was our best chance. He figured the odds were good that we’d save him, so he took his shot.”

Dylan swallowed against a sudden thickness in his throat. “I don’t – I don’t know if I would have done it,” he said. He felt impossibly old and out of place. He didn’t belong in this world. What had Tyr called him? An anachronism. 

“Of course you would have,” Beka snapped back, knocking him out of his reverie. “Where do you think Harper learned that ‘lay down your life’ crap in the first place? He looks up to you, Dylan. You’re the first good person any of us have ever even met.” She looked down at Harper, stroking his hair away from his forehead, and Dylan was struck by the tenderness in her gaze. 

“Don’t sell yourself short, Rebekka,” he replied quietly, touching her gently on the arm. She leaned in to the touch briefly before pulling away. 

“We better call Andromeda,” she said, running a hand over her face. “And get these carcasses off my ship.”

**

Andromeda answered the hail faster than they expected; Rev’s gravelly voice sharp with worry as he explained that they were only a few hours out. They’d been searching this whole time, of course, tracing and retracing the expected supply route, chasing down one slipstream exit after the next from the point at which they could last reliably identify the Maru. 

When the big ship arrived, Dylan and Beka both heaved a sigh of relief. Beck docked and as soon as the air lock hissed open, Andromeda’s bots where charging through with a stretcher to retrieve their patient. Rev appeared at Beka’s side and Tyr appeared at Dylan’s. 

“Something you needed?” Dylan asked, surprised. 

Tyr hesitated only a moment, but it was long enough to let Dylan know there had been some… concern. “I only thought you might like assistance with the walk to Med Deck,” the larger man replied, gesturing at Dylan’s brace. 

“I – thank you, Tyr,” Dylan replied, too tired to fight against the help. He felt Tyr’s strong arm come up around his back, taking his weight as they clumped through the halls. 

Trance was already hard at work in surgery when they arrived, so Tyr set him down on the nearest bio bed and the bots took over. Beka and Rev were hovering nearby. 

“Perhaps one of us ought to man the bridge,” Tyr murmured, and made his escape. Dylan hardly sensed him leaving. He locked eyes with Beka, seeing his own fear there. Harper had to make it through. He had to. 

**  
The night passed. Rev appeared with food at some point. Trance came out, finally, to say that Harper was stable, and that they should all go and rest. To punctuate the point, she walked Beka out herself, opting to take her to her quarters on Andromeda. Rommie’s bots were still cleaning up the Maru.

Dylan wandered away after enduring Rev’s pointed glances for a few minutes longer, and only once he was satisfied that Rev was diligently monitoring the other man. He collapsed onto his bed, letting his legs dangle. Rommie had, of course, seen to it that his leg was repaired while they were waiting for Trance to finish with Harper, and it was good as new. But he didn’t feel good as new. He felt old, and drained, and haunted. 

He shot himself, Dylan thought. Things got – I allowed things to get so bad that the only way out was for Harper to shoot himself. He felt nauseated, recognizing, vaguely, that he was experiencing shock. What the hell kind of world were they in? How could he ever bring peace and civilization to a place so desperate? 

And how could he ever repay the man that had saved their lives by nearly giving up his own? 

After a moment more of overwhelm, Dylan sighed. Stand up, he told himself, and he did. He wasn’t going to repay Harper by feeling sorry for himself. He walked over to the sink and washed his face, then stripped away his filthy clothes and entered the shower, where he stood for a long, long time, letting the water beat against his back. Starting tomorrow, he decided, he was going to figure out how to make things better for Harper – whatever he could do. 

**  
“You wanted to see me, Dylan?” Beka said uncertainly, hovering at the doorway of his quarters. He’d requested her presence first thing the next morning. 

“Please. Come in, sit down.” Dylan gestured at a chair, laying down the flexi he’d been reviewing. 

“What’s up?”

“How’s Harper?”

A shadow crossed Beka’s face. “He’s okay,” she replied. “I think he’s healing alright. He wouldn’t stay on med deck, so I’ve made him promise to check in with Rommie if he starts feeling unwell.” 

“Good.” Dylan nodded, lost in thought. 

“Dylan?” Beka smiled nervously, her eyes questioning. 

“Sorry. Beka, I need to ask you something. It’s something that’s probably really – unfair. But I need to know.”

“Okay.”

“Harper said he’d done it before. Was that – with you?”

Beka swallowed hard. “Yes.” She replied after a long pause. 

“How did it happen?”

“Pretty much the same way it happened this time,” she replied. “We got stuck on Marius and we needed parts. It was Seamus’s job to get them.”

“Did you – suggest to him that he…”

“Dylan – we’ve all done something like that. Believe me. I might not have gotten paid for it, but do you know how many loathsome docking station commanders I’ve…. Just to get a deal on the fees? And Trance’s predecessor, we once rented her to a police chief in exchange for not murdering Rev on principle. I know that probably sounds horrible, but that’s what it was like for us then. So yeah,” she finished, holding her head up defiantly. “Yeah, I pimped Harper out on Marius. I told him to go stand on the street corner in something tight and do whatever he had to do to get us a new slipstream core. I did what I had to do.”

Dylan’s face was tense, though Beka could tell he was trying very hard to be understanding. “How old was Harper the last time?” He asked through clenched teeth. 

Beka flushed. 

Dylan grimaced. “How old is he now? I don’t even know,” he continued, his voice a little softer. 

“He’s 24,” she answered. “I picked him up when he was 17.”

“He was a child.”

Beka shook her head. “Dylan, you say you understand, but you don’t. There are no children on Earth. Before I picked up Harper, do you know what he’d already done? Survived Nietzschean torture. Run away from slavery. Murdered people to protect his food. Killed his own kin who were infested with Magog eggs. He might have had to do some unpleasant things down on that planet, both this time and the time before, but believe me, when he came to me, he was no child.”

“He should have been.” 

“No argument there.”

“Beka, we have to help him. He can’t – how he lives, it’s not right.” Dylan gestured helplessly, at a loss for words. 

“Dylan, it’s too late. You can’t make him innocent again. Just – just treat him well and don’t judge him for doing what he has to, to survive. And don’t judge me, either.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I understand.” Beka stood, pausing at the door just as she had when she’d come in. “Dylan – you should go spend some time with him. He really responded to you down there. You might not think it’s enough, but that’s the closest anyone but me has gotten to Harper, well, since I’ve known him. I meant it when I said he looks up to you.”

“Thanks, Beka.” She smiled and slipped out, leaving him to brood alone. 

**

He’d expected Harper to be in his quarters, or else in Machine Shop 5, which seemed to be his favourite. Instead, Rommie informed him that the younger man was on the Observation Deck. Harper was stretched out on the floor in front of the window, gazing into space when Dylan walked in. 

“Hey boss,” he said as the older man approached. His voice was hoarse but his signature smile was plastered on his face. “How’s the knee?”

Dylan considered as he slid down beside the engineer. His movements were a bit stiff, still, but Andromeda’s nanobots had made quick work of the remaining healing process. “Not bad,” he replied. “How’s the gut?”

Harper chuffed, not quite a laugh. “Been better,” he admitted. 

“I’m surprised you’re up and about, quite frankly,” Dylan replied. 

Harper shrugged. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said. “I would never shoot myself in something vital.” It was true – Trance had reported that although the wound had bled extensively, Harper had missed major arteries and all organs. 

“You have good aim.”

Harper smiled again, mirthlessly, but said nothing. They sat in awkward silence for a moment and then both turned to speak at once. 

“Listen, boss, I – “

“Harper – Seamus – can we –”

Harper laughed. “You go,” he said. 

“No, go ahead,” Dylan replied. 

Harper opened his mouth, took a breath, then suddenly looked away. “It’s nothing, forget it.” 

Dylan considered pushing, then thought better of it. “Alright. I was just going to say – can we talk about it? What happened on Marius, I mean. I know that you don’t want to,” he hurried on when Harper’s face flushed, “And I’m not trying to put you on the spot. But I just – this is all very new for me, and I would like to be able to talk about it. I don’t like there being things that we can’t say among my crew.”

“There’s always things that you can’t say. Like, you can’t talk about Beka’s family history of substance use, and you can’t talk to Tyr about Kodiak Pride, and you can’t talk to you about your former crew, and you can’t talk to Trance about, well, anything.” Harper scoffed. “This ship is so full of elephants, it’s a wonder any of us have room to sit down.”

Dylan opened his mouth to protest, but there was nothing to say. He looked at the young man before him, at his tight, angry, exhausted face, at the stiff way he held his body, obviously in pain, at his hunched shoulders and his lowered gaze. A constant reminder of how things had changed. But maybe some things should change. Like the distance between a Captain and his crew. 

“Fair enough,” Dylan replied after a moment. “How about, you ask me anything about my former crew. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know – within reason, of course.”

Harper looked at him, suspicious. “Anything.”

“Anything within reason.”

Harper thought for a moment. “Okay. Who was your Chief Engineer?”

Dylan closed his eyes, picturing the woman’s ruddy cheeks and jolly smile. “Her name was Clarencia Brobutl. She was human, from Tarn Vedra, like me. Older lady. Had this laugh that reminded you of kind of reminded you of a mouse.” He could hear that squeak echoing in his head. 

“Was she smart?”

“Smart enough. More – handy, if you know what I mean.”

“Like me.” 

Dylan opened his eyes to meet Harper’s gaze. The younger man had a strange look on his face, seeming both fearful and hopeful at the same time. Dylan smiled. “Nowhere near as good as you, Harper.”

The other man rolled his eyes but flushed slightly. “You’re just saying that ‘cause I’m all shot up here,” he demurred, looking away. 

“No.” Dylan shifted, leaning down to capture Harper’s eyes again. “I’m not. Harper – Brobutl was smart. She was educated. She knew how to work these engines. But she was nothing like you. You have creativity. What you did on the Maru…”

“Shot myself and self-electrocuted in a desperate last-ditch effort toward survival?”

Dylan shook his head in amazement. “You found a way, Harper. We were in the most untenable situation I have faced since you pulled me out of that black hole, and you just kept hammering away at it, with no regard for yourself, until you found a way.”

“Brobutl wouldn’t have taken three shots to the gut for the greater good,” Harper rephrased. 

Dylan laughed out loud. “No, she most certainly would not. She was a great engineer. But she was also the first person to punch the clock when her shift was over. And she was first in line when the dinner bell rang, too.” Dylan grinned. “So you have that in common.”

“Hey, I work for my dinner!” Harper protested, but he smiled – a real smile, not one of Harper’s ready-to-wear masks that hid his pain and anxiety. Dylan was pleased to see that other man had loosened up –they both had, really. He let a moment pass in good-natured silence. 

“So what else do you want to know?” he asked after a moment. 

Harper considered. “How did she deal with the slipstream runners? They seem finicky; always coming out of alignment.” Harper peppered him with questions, and Dylan answered them one by one, until before he’d realized, almost an hour had passed. He was just about to suggest that he help Harper to bed when the younger man spoke up again, his voice suddenly quiet and much more serious. “Would you really have turned yourself out, back there on Marius, Dylan?”

Harper wasn’t looking at him again, and Dylan didn’t try to force him. Instead, he gazed out the window, and answered, “I would have.”

“That would have been horrible for you.”

“Yes.” Dylan paused for a moment, and then ventured, “I’m sure it was horrible for you, too.”

Harper shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad. I’ve – had worse.” He grimaced and lapsed into silence. Dylan waited, and after a moment, the young man continued. “When I was back on earth, stuff like that – it happened a lot. And other stuff. I’ve had bad things happen, Dylan. But I’ve done bad things. I’m not… I might be clever. But not good.”

“I disagree.” 

“You don’t know.” Harper’s voice was bitter, broken. 

“About your life back on earth, no. But I know what you do now. A bad person would have turned me out, Harper. Or Beka. A bad person would not be walking around with a self-inflicted belly wound just so that all three of us could get off Marius alive.” Harper was very still, looking away, but Dylan could see that he was listening. “I know that I can never understand the pain you’ve suffered. But I can see how you’ve turned that pain into determination to overcome every obstacle the universe throws at you. And that – that’s worth a thousand Brobutl’s, with their fine educations and their no-overtime policies. I would rather have you at my side. Don’t you see? You increase my chances of survival.”

It was something Rhade would say; kind of a Nietzschean cliché, really. But Harper didn’t seem to care; he was staring open-mouthed at Dylan in surprise. “I can honestly say that no one has ever said anything like that to me before,” he stammered at length. 

Dylan smiled. “Good. I’m glad I can surprise you, old and naïve as I am.”

Harper laughed a little, smiling. They were silent for a few moments more, and then in a small voice, Harper said, “thanks, Dylan.”

“Thank you, Seamus.” He glanced over at his engineer, who still sat stiffly, in pain. “Now what do you say to the idea of maybe getting some sleep?”

“Not sure I could sleep, to be honest,” Harper replied, grimacing. 

Realization settled over Dylan; one conversation wasn’t going to slay all the demons Harper faced. “All right. How about we just sit here?” He scooted closer to Harper and risked raising one arm invitingly. Harper looked at him uncertainly for a moment, and then leaned in, settling his head against Dylan’s shoulder. They sat in silence, staring out the window. After a moment, he felt Harper settle down, leaning on him more fully, and heard his breath even out. Dylan pulled him closer, holding him firmly as the young man slept. 

Like a babe in arms, he thought, and felt a swell of gratitude for being able to offer the engineer this small, innocent moment of peace. Dylan shifted to lean his weight against the wall and closed his eyes, content. Maybe moments were enough for now. 

**

The End


End file.
